


A Mother's Love

by Isolophiliac



Series: Idiosyncrasy Among Brothers [10]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Super Sons (Comics)
Genre: Damian Wayne Feels, Damian Wayne-centric, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-20
Updated: 2018-07-20
Packaged: 2019-06-13 06:23:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15358206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isolophiliac/pseuds/Isolophiliac
Summary: After his mother's latest test, Damian Wayne mulls over their relationship.





	A Mother's Love

**Author's Note:**

> I’d recommend listening to Vagabond by Fjora and Tommy Profit while reading this. ALSO - This one-shot takes place after Super Sons Issue #13 and #14 (The Parent Trap part One + Two).
> 
> So... You know... SPOILERS.

He didn’t know if it was just Grayson rubbing off on him or something more, but the rooftops of Gotham had become something of a latibule… a safe escape for Damian. Which was ridiculous, considering the number of people who tried to get away with crime not so far down below.

Once he found a spot he deemed acceptable, Damian sat down and turned his attention to his backpack. He hadn’t even bothered to go home, much less back to the school his father insisted he attend, not after the mess his mother had made of Metropolis. Instead, he’d come here, up onto the roof of one the many buildings crammed side-by-side in one of Gotham’s more residential areas.

It wasn’t a place anyone was likely to look, at least not for him.

His back was to the brick wall of the neighbouring building, a decaying, rectangular monstrosity that served as some kind of office space. Across from him stood an apartment building, in better shape than the one he was currently sitting on and much taller. For the briefest of moments Damian couldn’t help but wonder what people in that building thought when they turned towards their windows and saw him, not Robin, but some green-eyed, middle-eastern kid wearing a tattered and blood-stained classic tie-and-blazer school uniform, sitting there and going through his backpack. Not that he was anymore, as it had only taken him a handful of seconds to locate his pencils and just-almost-full sketchbook.

Drawing was one of the few ways Damian could clear his head that didn’t result in a lengthy and usually hypocritical lecture from his father.

He pressed his pencil, sharpened to a menacing point, ever-so-lightly against a blank page.

When he’d started learning things, training underneath the Al Ghul family’s unflinching eyes, his mother’s tests were always something he looked forward to. They were just as much a chance to prove himself to his grandfather as they had been a chance to prove himself to her. And sometimes, they’d lead to the days that were few and far between, when they’d sit together at the dinner table just a little longer than usual, eating ma'amoul and just talking, something no one the league found themselves doing very often.

But they also lead to the days that made his father look at him with cold eyes and made his brothers tense around him.

He didn’t want that, that much he was sure of.

_But the way his mother had behaved today…_

She’d been honest with him about her attack on him, and then on Louis Lane being another test and she acted as though it was nothing more than just that.

Like everything that had happened, him choosing his father and turning his back on the league, was just a child’s temper tantrum and that him refusing to kill Mara, even as she tried to kill him and him fighting against the league, against his grandfather, was just a teenage rebellion.

Like he was just a misbehaving child whose temperament she needed to assess.

It reminded him of when he was younger, it reminded him of those days.

Of the time when he was little and his mother had painted henna all over him because of just how fascinated he’d been with the intricate artwork he’d seen sprawling across her skin and how she’d rebuked his grandfather’s disapproval with one simple sentence, “hu abnay, sa'afeal bih ma 'arah mnasbana.”

_He's my son, I'll do to him whatever I see fit._

It was one of the few times Damian had seen his mother exhibit anything even remotely close to disobedience, and one of the two times he’d seen her get away with it.

And of how she used to sing, how she’d quietly hum all these old songs her mother, someone Damian knew next to nothing about, had taught her when she was a little girl.

Damian knew better than to be sentimental.

He tried to remind himself of all the other things.

But… Talia had never been an _entirely_ awful mother, bad, yes, maybe even a little terrible, but never as evil as everyone seemed to think.

So why was it so wrong that sometimes, just _sometimes,_ those cookies and dyes and that voice were the only things he wanted?

_A Mother's love is something that no one can explain,  
It is made of deep devotion and of sacrifice and pain._

_\- Helen Steiner Rice_


End file.
